When you ask for it

Martin Shkreli, 34, has confidently courted controversy in recent years, bulldozing his way into Wall Street and the drug industry, raising the price of a lifesaving drug by 5,000 percent overnight, boasting that he would outwit prosecutors in his federal fraud case, and live-streaming and tweeting throughout his five-week trial.

But on Friday, after five days of deliberations, jurors convicted him on three counts of fraud in federal court, and he now faces up to 20 years in prison on each of the first two counts, and up to five years on the final count.

Mr. Shkreli looked shaken as the judge read the verdict. But not long after, he appeared outside of court and returned to form, saying that he was “delighted, in many ways,” with the verdict. “This was a witch hunt of epic proportions, and maybe they found one or two broomsticks,” he said.

Later in the afternoon, he was live-streaming once more, sipping beer and joking about prison life from his Manhattan apartment.

At the trial in the Federal District Court in Brooklyn, Mr. Shkreli was accused of securities and wire fraud related to two hedge funds he ran, MSMB Capital and MSMB Healthcare. Prosecutors charged he illegally used a pharmaceutical company he founded, Retrophin, to repay defrauded MSMB investors. And they said he secretly controlled a huge number of Retrophin shares.

In a case like this, the judge will be scrupulous is following sentencing guidelines which will disappoint many people who think the little shit should get life. But dotting the i's and crossing the t's may prevent an overturn on appeal which would hurt worse.